In a recent study on membership and engagement by MCI Group, an international events and association management provider, they discovered that those with the strongest relationship and recall of an association were most often nonmember customers, followed by members who have experience using a product or service in the last 18 months

Peter Turner, senior adviser for global development strategy at MCI Group, says, “What we know is that people in global markets, particularly those in emerging and developing markets, are hungry for practical information.”

The study found that people who join an Association but do not purchase products are significantly more likely to drop their membership, whereas customers who buy at least one product have a much stronger relationship. They are more likely to become members and more likely to renew.

To take advantage of this new information, it is crucial for Associations to not only be capturing their content, but, slicing that content up into different products to appeal to a wider audience of buyers. Creating more products that create a larger number of buyers will ultimately grow your membership base and increase the engagement level of those members.

In other words, some of your strongest relationships may not be with your members; instead they may be with customers attending an event or seeking an accreditation. “The whole notion of a membership-first strategy could be dangerous,” Turner says. “Because what we found is that members who are only interested in becoming a member often have weaker engagement scores.”

GigTV provides services designed for slicing and dicing your content into segmented and specialty products, along with numerous programs for distributing those products, is just the kind of tool needed to leverage this study’s findings.

This study clearly shows the connection between delivering content and growing membership. Content is not just for educational purposes. If you want to drive engagement and grow your membership, it is crucial to capture your content, sell your content, produce Webinars, run meetings and produce opportunities to create a customer, as those customers will turn into more valuable members.

To learn more about how we’ve been helping Associations build new revenue, contact us